I think it depends a lot on the individual congregation. Our previous church was terrible socially: everyone stuck to their own in-groups (which often overlapped with extended family), and there was little mingling outside of Sunday morning. Our current church, however, is incredibly vibrant: we've made many close friends there, and the church community goes out of its way for each other (such as doing extensive landscaping last week for two members fighting cancer). Both of these churches are effectively from the same denomination.

Sure. I haven't hopped and skipped too many but that's been my experience with Catholic churches everywhere, a family affair. Mind you, French and Italian families can be fucking massive which kind of renders the mingling redundant.

> All of which to say I think our social needs were met in large part by family, and Church was a convenient vehicle to bring it together. There's no substitute for family.

In my experience churches and families are not independent things. Basically every healthy church spends a significant amount of time encouraging healthy families in both direct and indirect ways.

And most healthy churches aren't all that convenient. There are too many people involved for church to be convenient.

They're at once inconvenient, and convenient. Otherwise there would be no point.

I'd say they're totally independent even if you perceive they may benefit families; lots of institutions can.